I'm lucky to be living the career I have dreamed of since age 16, writing and publishing mystery, romance and mainstream novels and short stories.
More about my books at http://www.mahubooks.com

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

The Miami River

I’ve been intrigued by the Miami River
since I moved to South Florida, some twenty-seven years ago. Its five and a
half miles snake past empty lots and high-rise hotels, fading shipyards and
condo towers, connecting Biscayne Bay to the Everglades, and has been a
commercial transportation route since the first white men came to these shores
and began trading with the Seminoles and Miccosukees.

In the 1970s, the Miami River was a major
port for cocaine smugglers. That trade climaxed with a case called the Miami
River Cops Scandal in 1985. The Mary C, a fishing boat loaded with $12 million
in cocaine, docked at the Jones Boat Yard, and soon after a dozen policemen
were alleged to have ransacked it and stolen the drugs. By the time the dust
settled, about a hundred officers had been arrested, suspended or reprimanded
and at least twenty were sentenced to prison for robbing dope dealers of cash
and cocaine.

I worked in downtown Miami in the mid-80s,
and my co-workers and I used to go to a little waterfront café right in the
middle of the industrial zone, where we could watch freighters glide by, bound
for Haiti stacked with stolen bicycles. Wrecked and abandoned boats littered
its shores, and its waters were polluted. It served as a point of entry for
illegal drugs and illegal aliens.

I was fascinated by the river, and even
wrote a screenplay that took place there, called River Heat, about a naïve young Anglo with a powerboat who rescues
a beautiful Nicaraguan revolutionary running along the riverbank. I spent a lot
of time cruising around the river, looking for settings that evoked the images
I wanted.

Even though I’ve moved a half-hour north of
the city, I’m still interested in the Miami River. The climactic scenes of my
newest book, Genie for Hire: A BiffAndromeda Mystery, concern arms smuggling from the backwaters of the former
Soviet Union. The arms arrive at the Miami airport, smoothed along by a corrupt
Customs officer, and then are offloaded to a freighter for shipment to Nicaragua.

The papers say the river has been cleaned
up, but I’m sure there’s still a clandestine business going on there, which is
terrific for a mystery writer.